


One More Tomorrow

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: The Edge of Darkness [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Amon-centric, Brother-Sister Relationships, F!Tarrlok - Freeform, Gen, Villain PoV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: Over the years, Noatak of the Northern Water Tribe gradually turned into Amon. But he will always be his sister's brother.
Relationships: Amon | Noatak & Tarrlok, Noatak & Tarrlock (Avatar)
Series: The Edge of Darkness [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/820308
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I initially started adding these chapters to the original _[The Edge of Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/544777/chapters/969296)_, but since they're separated by so much time (in-story and out of it!) and since it's not necessary to read the pre-existing chapters of _The Edge of Darkness_ to follow this, I thought it made more sense to break it into a separate story in the same continuity.

In the first few years after his escape from Yakone, Noatak drifted: from place to place, from name to name. He did his best to subsume himself in each identity he pulled over himself, burying stray thoughts of where he had come from and what—who—_what _he had left behind. There was no going back; those thoughts belonged to someone else, a boy who could only trip him up now.

He had to scrape by on his wits and bending, as he had always expected; and he had to do it alone, which he’d never expected.

Sometimes, despite himself, he thought of Taraka. She would be alone, too: alone with nothing but their unseeing mother between her and Yakone’s wrath. She _was _weak, and that made it worse. He didn’t know how she’d break, but he knew she would. He’d left her there (with Yakone, with—)

But he’d given her the chance to come with him, to be free. It was Taraka who chose subjection.

He told himself that over and over, squelching the guilt and fear that touched him whenever he thought of her now. Instead he focused his thoughts on scraping by from one village to the next, learning whatever he could; you never knew what might be useful someday. And though the memory of shaking hands and anguished blue eyes flickered into his mind whenever the fragile and helpless crossed his path, he helped these ones, protected them, _saved _them.

It happened frequently enough, and happened more and more often over the years. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to save Taraka, but breaking away from her had freed him to save so many others. Non-benders, too, where she had her formidable waterbending to protect her, if she would only use it.

She wouldn’t, but at least she had the choice.

For himself, at first he felt the same enjoyment in bending that he always had. He even felt a touch of gratitude; he knew that he owed his survival to it. He was pleased when he encountered other waterbenders as he travelled, and could either teach or learn from them, though he had the sense to keep everything he knew about bloodbending to himself. 

From stray waterbenders in the Earth Kingdom, he picked up healing; that far from home, tradition held less sway, and the masters he found were both skilled and eager to teach so interested a pupil. Taking bending away didn’t occur to him then, but at twenty, influencing chi paths struck him as a far more remarkable power than it had seemed as a boy. His mother must have been stronger than he’d imagined—a stronger bender, anyway. 

He was Sura’s son as well as Yakone’s, and he soon mastered healing as he had mastered everything else. More complex problems required a careful, precise hand, but he’d learned that with bloodbending. It was more of the same; it just didn’t hurt them, most of the time, and he didn’t feel so distant from everything afterwards. 

For some time after he finished his training, he worked as a healer. By then, he lived a good distance from either Water Tribe, and found that people were willing to pay good money for a waterbender—much better than they paid non-bending doctors. And if they couldn’t, he didn’t mind doing it for free. 

For awhile, this much satisfied him. He was helping people, and quietly adding to his savings as he did. But increasingly he felt that something was missing, that he could be doing more—that he _should _be doing more. And while he had to make his way somehow, he found that he didn’t care for driving non-benders out of business. They knew as much as he did, and often more; they should be his equals.

Without warning, the past jolted him: Taraka’s high clear voice crying, _It’s not fair! _He’d meant to make the world fairer, more equal, and what was he doing? Only deepening the gap between benders and non-benders, one of the greatest inequalities of them all. They had to work for what came so easily to him, and they would still never be what he was.

What _would _he be, without his bending? What would any of them be? He could hardly imagine a life without water at his call. But for a moment, he let himself recall his childhood, before everything went wrong. Before bending. He’d been a good son, a good brother—in fact, he might not not have made any worse a man as a non-bender than he was as a waterbender.

He might have made a better one.

But it was pointless to wonder. He couldn’t change his power or anyone else’s. Still, the thought lingered, recurring at odd moments. He imagined himself as a non-bender, imagined the sort of life he could lead. And eventually, it occurred to him that he could do more than imagine it. He was under no obligation to _tell _anyone he was a waterbender. He could keep quiet about it, let people draw their own conclusions, and see how he got by.

With or without his bending, he was strong and fast and flexible. He got by with only slight, motionless forays into waterbending, inventing names and histories for himself as he continued on. It became nearly as much a habit as bending itself. He felt more sympathetic to the non-benders he met than any bender, felt—_aligned _with them, in an odd way, even as he saw them intimidated and exploited by benders.

It wasn’t just a bad apple here and there. He saw it happen over and over again. And hadn’t benders been the ones to bring war after war? Didn’t they bring suffering everywhere? He could only imagine what his father had gotten up to in Republic City, before Avatar Aang took his bending away. But he knew only too well what bending could do to a family. It was families, cities, nations.

Something should be done. If he were the Avatar, he’d strip the world of bending altogether, even his own. He had reason to know that de-bended people would still produce bending children, but if they could just stop it for a generation—if they could make people understand what it was like to be vulnerable and afraid, put everyone on the same level—then—

He couldn’t change the world. But there had to be a way to help.

* * *

Nobody had talked of chi-blocking in his village. Even in the Earth Kingdom, years passed before he heard a word of it. Once he did, however, he knew he’d found the answer.

An answer, at least.

He’d been wandering from the day he fled the north, patching up small problems, absorbing knowledge as he came across it. Now, he went looking for it. There _was _a way to even the odds, equalize benders and non-benders, if he could only learn how. He spent a good year searching for chi-blockers, then—with some effort—swallowed his pride and begged them to teach him. He didn’t even recall all that he promised in exchange for lessons; he’d have said anything.

He dared not bend while he was learning, but the fluid maneuvers he’d learned from childhood on, defense sliding into attack and back again, served him well. Effective chi-blocking required speed, agility, instant adaptation to attacks that could easily kill him (well, not _him_). He had all that, and in short order, he made a skilled chi-blocker. But he had to be more than skilled; even after he left his latest set of masters, he practiced constantly, looking for bending criminals and oppressors and launching himself at them without bending at all. 

It worked better than he’d dreamed. They crumpled like paper. When he combined it with slight amounts of bloodbending, enough to slow down his opponents a little, he found himself unstoppable.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t teach bloodbending (he thought of Taraka, and his blood chilled). But he taught chi-blocking wherever he could. 

The problem was that people, even vulnerable people, had only so much time and willingness to learn from a traveller out of nowhere. He needed to settle down. Set up a school, maybe. But that would still limit his reach, especially out in the Earth Kingdom countryside. On top of that, he was a young man, and looked younger than he was; people often doubted that he could have anything of value to teach. 

Yet he’d been teaching since he was a child, since he shoved their father’s lessons down Taraka’s throat. Cautiously, he dared think of it: himself, the waterbending prodigy; Taraka, small and scared. She’d been right to hate their bending, more right than she knew. If he’d only listened, things might be different. She might be fighting at his side even now, and instead, he would never see her again.

He jerked his thoughts away from futile what-might-have-beens. All that mattered was that he did know how to teach, but she’d been right, and their father, horrifically wrong. Yakone would have had them waterbending their way south and terrorizing a whole city as he had done. 

_A city. _Wasn’t that what he needed? A place to start, a place to reach people and help. A way to practice, too, but that was all right; criminals flourished in cities.

They had certainly flourished in Republic City. Probably even without Yakone. He could go there—the very place he’d dreamed of all those years ago, but as a liberator instead of the oppressor he’d been trained to be. It suited his sense of the appropriate; he’d long ago turned on Yakone in person, and now he could turn on his plans, grind his dreams into dust.

It felt like destiny. Without further hesitation, he headed south.

* * *

He never did start a school—not formally. But Republic City turned out to be more fruitful than he’d imagined. Bending gangs ran rampant on the streets, sprouting up again every time they were quashed by the bending police. The council that governed the city was comprised entirely of benders. Benders were preferred for every office, high and low. They even dominated the world of entertainment as pro-benders; he watched a few games, unimpressed by the waterbenders’ performances, and repelled by the sport.

It took very little time to find people who dreamed of standing up to benders, and sometimes more. Earning their trust was a more difficult matter, all the more as an outsider. 

It didn’t help that he was instantly recognizable as a member of the Water Tribe. The bulk of non-benders in Republic City, like the bulk of everyone in Republic City, had origins in the Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom. Most of those from the Water Tribes were waterbenders looking to find their fortunes, or their descendants. At first glance, people almost always assumed he was a waterbender himself. They were right, of course, but it didn’t help.

On top of that, he’d realized that he needed to reach people who didn’t know him personally to have any hope of changing the city. He had to be a _leader_.

After years of passing himself off as various non-benders, the idea of Amon coalesced quickly. He needed to conceal his origins in the Water Tribe to avoid any association with waterbending, which meant a mask to hide his features and blue eyes. Judicious use of make-up did the rest. He needed to attract sympathy without pity, which meant yet another invented history. A firebender attack—the sort of story he’d heard too many times, even if it wasn’t his own. 

He started with the most overtly disaffected non-benders: first, just talking to them, and then, offering lessons. This was successful enough that he soon had to rent a building for it, but he and his group of egalitarians pooled their resources enough to cover the expenses. More and more people came, and listened, and learned. He became increasingly outspoken; so did they. 

At the time, he thought vaguely of changes in law and policy, but even then, he knew it wouldn’t be enough. Bending had seeped into every corner of society. Chi-blocking only did so much, when you couldn’t target more than one person at a time, and that for a short while. There was no getting away from bending on any large scale. 

In the meanwhile, he did what he could about the triads. He couldn’t get rid of them, but he could certainly inconvenience them—so sometimes he took off the mask and make-up, slipped away from his apartment into triad territory, and fought entire groups of them with every skill at his disposal. Waterbending, bloodbending, chi-blocking: they all fused into one exhilarating, horrifying whole. He loved it and he hated it, all at once.

The Red Monsoons in particular learned to fear him. But he could only spare so much time for them. He had the Equalists to lead and guide, and they occupied the vast majority of his life and thoughts, even without a clear goal in sight beyond teaching more and more people to defend themselves. He gathered so many, in fact, that he had to deputize some of his most skilled followers to take over the bulk of the teaching. Surely this was enough to accomplish _something_. 

It wasn’t. His five years in Republic City felt like a lifetime, and yet the city remained the same.

At the end of that fifth year, when he was thirty-four, a representative of the Water Tribe died. Amon paid little enough attention to this at first; the councilman would undoubtedly be replaced by some new, equally unworthy bender. One was very much like another.

Still, any and all political changes were his business. He habitually listened to the news in his spare time anyway, so it was no great trouble to turn the radio on. He caught the tail end of the announcers’ usual babble as he drank his tea. 

“A breathtaking end to the championship,” said the first announcer. “Truly breathtaking.”

“Quite, quite,” said his counterpart. “Well, in other news, Republic City has a full council again. Taraka of the Northern Water Tribe has been appointed to Councilman Nuniq’s seat—”

Amon’s cup shattered.

Blankly, he stared at the tea spilling over his skin and soaking into his clothes. It seemed ludicrous that the announcers were still talking, words like _chief _and _interim _and _finally _buzzing past his head as he bent the tea off himself.

Taraka? No, no—impossible—she’d be alive somewhere, but not _here_—and he couldn’t imagine her as a politician of all things. Whatever their other failings, the role required confidence, nerve, the very qualities that Taraka had so conspicuously lacked. And the name wasn’t unknown in the north; it must be someone else.

Noatak stalked over to the radio and wound up the dial, straining to catch every word.

“An interesting choice on Chief Unalaq’s part,” said the second announcer. “Councilwoman Taraka will be the youngest person ever appointed to the council, I believe?”

“Yes,” the first one replied, “she’s just thirty-one. Quite the accomplishment, even for an interim position.”

Thirty-one. His sister, eternally a child in his mind, was only three years his junior; she would have turned thirty-one this year.

It wasn’t proof. But he took the first opportunity of slipping out of his apartment as an ordinary man and buying a newspaper. Incredibly, the announcement didn’t make the first page, which was taken up with the doings of some idiot pro-benders. But on the second, a column recounted the news of the council’s vacancy and the background of Councilman Nuniq’s replacement. He read almost frantically. 

Councilwoman Taraka had lived in the Northern Water Tribe’s capital for years, but one of the (supposedly) direct quotations from her said that she’d dreamed of coming to Republic City since her girlhood. She was inexpressibly honoured to be chosen, meant to do everything in her power to serve the interests of the city, etc etc. That could be anyone. 

The photograph couldn’t, though. For a moment, he allowed himself to believe she _was _another woman, relief and disappointment washing through him. Councilwoman Taraka had a narrow face with prominent cheekbones and strong, neatly arched brows. A pleasant smile curled her mouth and her hair was smoothly pulled away from her face. Altogether, she looked assured and polished, nothing like his sister.

Her hair—

Glancing down, he saw that it was divided into three tails, each caught in what looked like wooden loops. Exactly the way that Taraka had always worn hers.

_Exactly_.

He looked more closely at the photograph, and now he could see it. The shape of the face was right, allowing for the loss of childhood fat. The nose, exactly the one he saw in the mirror every day. The fierce brows and decided chin, too. This woman might very well be Taraka.

Another bender on the council, if so. 

But—Taraka!


	2. Chapter 2

Amon quickly gathered his senses and his composure, conscious of raising questions if he just stood there gawking at the newspaper. He rolled it up and set out on his daily business under the most impenetrable of his disguises—his own face, unmasked and unscarred, and faded blue clothes. Nobody ever saw anything in that man but a poor if polite waterbender.

Except the triads, but he didn’t quite trust himself with _them _today. 

That night, Amon put on make-up, anonymous grey and his mask, and headed out to lead an advanced training session. He was as confident and decisive as ever with the students he taught, and careful to keep an eye on those he’d assigned to his most advanced pupils. With his own, he patiently offered suggestions that would lead to the solutions he meant them to reach. He couldn’t fail them or risk himself just because someone he no longer knew had come to Republic City.

Afterwards, he disappeared into the night, hid the mask in his bag, and gradually wound his way to his apartment, alert to anyone who might be following him. Nobody dared. Locking the door, he tossed the bag aside, lit a lamp, and washed the carefully constructed scar off his face. It was everything he always did.

Then he unfurled the newspaper and pored over the column and photograph again, his pulse thudding in his ears. He felt almost certain that the woman in the picture was his sister. Not broken after all, but successful and, to go by her expression, contented with the course of her life. 

He’d forced her to stand on her own two feet. Maybe it’d been good for her, difficult though that was to envision. Perhaps some lucky chance had befriended her, like their parents dropping dead. Perhaps—he couldn’t know. He didn’t know _her_. He didn’t even know her public facade.

The last, at least, he could change. 

Dimly, an idea tugged at the back of his mind, though he couldn’t pin it down. Never mind; it would emerge in its own time, as all his ideas did. For now, he’d find a way to attend a speech or some such that Taraka might participate in. In person, he would know for certain.

It wasn’t difficult. Almost immediately after Taraka’s arrival in Republic City, the council held a public assembly—something to do with crime—at which each of the members spoke. Amon stood well to the back, jostled by other eager attendees, but he didn’t care.

It was her.

Before she spoke a word, he knew. He could feel her there as he felt himself. His sister had found her way to Republic City.

Was she here for Yakone’s revenge, after all? Or did she mean to do good? That, he couldn’t say. Amon watched and listened as the other councillors droned through their speeches, mouthing the words with little interest and less charisma. Would Taraka be more of the same? He remembered that she had been a good speaker as a child, in the right circumstances able to wheedle even Yakone, and a ready liar. Maybe she’d found the right career after all.

For a certain value of _right_.

When her turn came, Taraka strode up to the podium, the ropes of her hair swinging over her shoulders. Amon, accustomed to performance, scrutinized her. She wore fine clothes in appropriate shades of blue and white, but they didn’t seem to quite fit her; it gave the impression of a certain carelessness that he didn’t approve of. They also gave the impression that she was bigger than she could really be, however, which might be the real purpose. Or perhaps she’d been ill.

Taraka adjusted the podium with a slight frown, then lifted her head and gazed out at the audience with every appearance of confidence.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, leaning forward intently. Her voice was deeper than he remembered, but unmistakably hers, and pitched high enough to be heard throughout the crowd. “Words, words, words. All you hear is words while the triads invade your neighbourhoods and homes!”

A jolt rippled through the audience. From the back, Amon could see it clearly. The other councilmembers glanced at each other.

“We’ve had enough of meaningless talk. It’s time for action,” she went on, her gaze running over the people gathered in front of her. “Believe me, I understand that. I was appointed to represent my people, but I have every intention of representing _all _of you and advancing your best interests. As your councilwoman, I’m going to pursue the criminals and predators in this city with every tool at my disposal and get them off our streets!” 

She slammed her hand down on the podium.

They were with her now. Amon clapped alongside the rest, if with somewhat less enthusiasm. She seemed strong, assertive, determined—everything he could have hoped she’d become. Yet it disturbed him, deeply. This was wrong.

Taraka went on, “Trust me. They _will _pay for what they’ve done!”

Around him, the applause grew louder, joined by the occasional cheer. Taraka straightened up and lifted her other hand until the crowd quieted.

“I look forward to fighting for each of you and all of Republic City. Thank you for your time and patience,” she said, with a sudden bright smile. 

In the front, reporters lifted their cameras.

“Do you have specific measures in mind, councilwoman?” one asked.

Taraka held her pose and her smile. “Yes, but you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t immediately reveal them in a public forum.”

Another raised his hand. “Councilwoman Taraka—”

It was too late. The other reporters, encouraged at receiving an answer, sprang up.

“Do you think the triads are the greatest threat facing Republic City?”

“What do you think of Chief Beifong? Are you planning to coordinate with her?”

“Are you going to run for election?”

Taraka laughed outright. “Forgive me—this is a very serious matter, but I’ve been in office a _week_. Right now, all I’m thinking about is how I can best serve Republic City. Thank you, everyone.”

With a slight, dignified nod, she withdrew from the podium to her seat among the other members of the council. As soon as she did, a half-dozen conversations broke out near Amon, the other listeners paying virtually no attention to the closing remarks of the chairman. He himself felt as if she had taken some part of the air with her, the atmosphere flattening in a peculiar, inexpressible way. 

He took a deep breath, thinking of his students’ intense focus when he walked into a room, and his sense of their deflation when he left it. This must be what they felt. Yes: whatever else Taraka might have become, she was no Nuniq or Tenzin. As for the rest—

Well, he’d wait and see.

* * *

Taraka was as true to her word as any reasonable person could expect. The city ramped up its pursuit of the triads and increased sentences for anyone found attacking a citizen. She personally brought in more than one group of bending criminals, which Amon should have approved of, but instead found unsettling.

It didn’t stop them, any more than a certain vigilante waterbender had stopped the Red Monsoons, but it succeeded in giving the impression that the city was taking action. Where others dithered impotently, Councilwoman Taraka got things done.

That, he suspected, was her real intent, or at least the primary one. He had no reason to doubt that Taraka hated criminals, but everything she said or did seemed geared to benefit her. She made no sacrifices that he could tell, risked nothing, revealed nothing, instead constantly projecting stern authority or breaking into pleasant, satisfied smiles. Her pictures in the paper were always flattering and the coverage fawning; she’d clearly cultivated good relationships with the press. 

At no point did she evince the slightest concerns for non-benders. Rather the opposite—if she slipped at all, it was in using _earthbenders_, _waterbenders_, and _firebenders _to refer to entire populations, bending and non-bending alike. Whenever anyone raised attention to the plight of non-benders after a speech, she shrugged them off, dismissing protesters as lazy and sheltered. 

“We all have our problems,” she said. “But the triads don’t stop to check if you can bend or not.”

He was disappointed in her. Very disappointed. The girl who had wrung her heart over elephantrats and wolves had since become a slippery, self-serving woman with no sympathy for an entire group of human beings. What had happened to her?

If it was Yakone—if it was Yakone’s influence without Noatak there to shield her from it—then—

No, it wasn’t his fault. She had stayed behind.

_She was a child_, part of him protested. He could have gone back for her. He repressed the thought, and the memory of her voice calling after him; he had enough problems without resurrecting pointless recollections of a past that scarcely belonged to him. Taraka had made her choices.

And those choices meant he couldn’t trust her.

For himself, the crackdown complicated his already-complicated existence. The Equalists had to avoid the city’s increased scrutiny, and when he ventured into triad territory, he had decent odds of encountering city guards unless he planned his excursions with care. The difficulty sharpened his interest, however, and he found himself doing it more and more, trying different techniques. Bloodbending without giving it away while dodging and chi-blocking was a challenge—but he liked challenges. 

A year passed, then two. Once Taraka’s interim appointment ran out, she did run for her seat, executing a particularly ruthless campaign against her opponent and smiling all the while. She easily won. 

Meanwhile, among the Equalists, an introduction to the friend of an acquaintance changed everything.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Amon said. In the moment, he felt more distant curiosity than anticipation.

“The pleasure is all mine,” said Hiroshi Sato.

* * *

Hiroshi was delighted at the chance to help—so delighted, in fact, that Amon kept a sharp eye out for betrayal. It never came. Eventually, the man revealed that his wife had been murdered by benders. He’d gladly see every single one of them wiped off the face of the earth.

Amon had no intention of perpetrating mass slaughter. But he did understand the necessity for benders to experience the fear they inflicted on so many—the fear that Yasuko Sato had felt. There would be no true equality until they understood what they’d done.

Belatedly, he remembered that he was a bender himself. But _he _understood, thanks to Yakone. Yakone himself hadn’t; wouldn’t he have been a different man if he knew what it was to be afraid?

(Yet Taraka had known. As ever, Amon banished the thought.)

The Equalists needed to show the city what he, Amon, showed the triads. But the non-benders of the city couldn’t do what he did—not all of it. They’d need help.

It was Hiroshi, mechanical genius that he was, who came up with the idea of technological enhancements. Lightningbenders weren’t the only source of power in the city. It would take some experimentation, of course, and a great many resources, but Hiroshi was only too willing to offer them. Amon, pierced by hope of more than he’d dared to imagine, readily gave him the go-ahead.

They were talking, he realized, of revolution.

* * *

Amon was looking over some of Hiroshi’s latest designs when the thought returned to him: the problem was that anything they might do would be _temporary_. Either they’d be left with thousands of angry benders on their hands, or they’d have to keep chi-blocking every single person indefinitely. No, they needed to go beyond blocking chi; they needed to completely alter the flow of it. And there was no way of doing that, except healing, and—

Except healing. Except waterbending.

Amon’s thoughts raced around his mind, so fast that he could scarcely follow them. Waterbending did the opposite of what he needed. No, _healing _did the opposite of what he needed. Could he reverse it in some way? He’d never tried. With bloodbending, there was no need for—bloodbending! Was that the answer? If he tied it to healing somehow—

He didn’t know if it would work. Like Hiroshi, he’d have to experiment. He almost laughed at the idea of Hiroshi’s face if he heard his efforts compared to bending. But it was a necessary evil in this case.

Amon returned to his fights with the triads, this time with rather different intentions.

He needed live subjects.

* * *

He didn’t succeed the first time. Or the tenth. Sometimes he thought his epiphany must be wrong, and disrupting bending lay beyond his powers, however extensive they might be. Sometimes he nearly cringed from the results; some of the subjects turned catatonic, and a good number died. They were _predators_, he reminded himself, not innocent people. Still, he didn’t like killing, even on accident. He didn't want anyone dead at his hands. Nor did he want them wrecked for life. He just wanted them to fear and understand, and then to be purified.

Someday, he promised himself. Someday he would succeed. He could admit no other possibility.

In the event, it took him years—years in which Hiroshi tinkered and the Equalists began standing up for themselves, more and more publicly. The council responded by treating them as no more than another threat, and plainly regarded most non-benders as either suspect or victims. His hand-picked deputies, though always respectful, urged action that would force the city to recognize them as a major force; it was Amon who insisted on waiting until the time was right.

He didn’t mean waiting for the council to see reason. They never would, any of them. Even Taraka.

Particularly Taraka. He’d have liked to imagine that she had simply fallen under the malign sway of her peers, as she had lived under his sway in their childhood. But it was Taraka who spoke out most aggressively against the Equalists, Taraka who advocated for harsher penalties for attacks on benders, Taraka whose reputation rose until the council elected her chairwoman, Taraka who seemed the worst of them all. A monster.

And yet, his sister still. When the Avatar’s son voted _present _for her confirmation as chair, Amon prickled despite himself. Did Tenzin think he could do a better job? Pah. At least Taraka had made something of herself. Something terrible, to be sure, but she had more competence than the rest of the council combined. 

She was thirty-six that year, Amon thirty-nine. No longer young, either of them; twenty-three years had passed since their last interchange. Twenty-three years, ten more than their entire childhood together, and it still haunted him at odd moments. Maybe it always would. They’d suffered from bending, and the bonds of suffering were not easily broken. The Equalists proved that by the day.

It was that year, also, that Amon first laid his thumb on a captive firebender’s forehead, concentrated on the paths he’d known from his youth, and with a slight, careful exercise of his will, severed the firebending. It was still there, but completely inaccessible.

The firebender crumpled, and for a moment, Amon feared that he’d failed yet again. Instead, the man scrambled up and punched the air in Amon’s direction. Nothing happened. The firebender stared at his fist while Amon waited patiently, then swung his leg. By force of habit, Amon tracked the movement, ready to dodge out of the way—but he knew he didn’t need to. 

He’d found the solution.

He _was _the solution.


	3. Chapter 3

Hiroshi came through better than Amon had dreamed. He figured out the electrified gloves and supplied thousands of them, along with uniforms, assorted equipment, flags, even zeppelins. The opportunity for real, profound change could never have happened without him—at least not with a chance of success. The man was worth his weight in gold.

He was also deeply irritating, his blend of paternal cheer and seething rants against benders grating on Amon’s nerves. But war against oppression had made stranger companions. Amon allowed the mask to hide his occasional grimace and endured. 

Early that winter, Amon turned forty. He saw no need to mark the occasion, though it seemed extraordinary that he had spent forty years on the earth and accomplished—what? 

A great deal, come the revolution. And he had determined it would come that very year. Within a matter of months, in fact.

Irrepressibly, he thought of Taraka. Her birthday was only a few days after his. She’d be thirty-seven, risen over the years from the nothing village of their birth to the most powerful position in the city. _ She _could think of herself as accomplished, and undoubtedly did. 

And it was his place to return her to nothing. 

The thought sat uncomfortably with him. The other members of the council could live or die for all he cared, as long as they were stripped of their bending and their positions. But Taraka, the worst of them all—

He was honest enough with himself to admit it: he disliked the idea of taking her bending. He knew it for a weakness; he should make no exceptions, least of all over a simple matter of blood. He could hardly command the Equalists in good conscience if he changed the rules when it came to _ his _sister.

At the same time, wasn’t it his place to protect her? Hadn’t he failed dismally, to go by what she had become?

Bending had wrecked their lives, he reminded himself. It had wrecked _ her _. She’d be better without it. Happier, once she understood. Yet the prospect of severing her from her bending still irrationally repelled him.

Regardless, it must be done. But he recoiled from the possibility of her death. No, he would keep her safe. And sooner or later, he would have his sister back again. 

* * *

Not long thereafter, Taraka more than justified Amon’s reservations about her. Not that she hadn’t done that already, but with the arrival of the Avatar, she transformed from an opponent to a threat that Amon knew must be neutralized.

Second to the Avatar herself, of course. She was meant to be a guardian and protector of the world, most of all to the vulnerable. But Avatar Aang had shrugged off Yakone’s escape—the depredations of countless Yakones, and this new one had done nothing at all. Besides, man or woman, they were the ultimate bender.

Carefully, Amon and a few of his most trusted supporters listened to the radio announcement that their foremost enemy had landed in Republic City.

“I’m Korra, your new Avatar,” she said. He didn’t care about her name, but he paid close attention to her voice: a young woman’s, rather strained and awkward.

Voices crackled in the background. Reporters, he imagined. 

“Uh … yes,” said the Avatar, “I am definitely here to stay, but honestly, I—I don’t exactly have a plan yet. See, I’m still in training—”

Ah. He felt almost disappointed. She’d be an inconvenience to be sure, but probably not much of a challenge. 

_ Probably _.

“All I know is Avatar Aang meant for this city to be the center of peace and balance in the world, and I believe we can make his dream a reality. I look forward to serving you. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you, Republic City!”

His lieutenant switched off the radio and glanced at him. 

“Amon, how do you want to handle this?” he asked.

“So, the Avatar has arrived early,” said Amon, thinking through it. Whatever else this girl might be, he decided, she _ was _the Avatar. Only that mattered. “It looks like we’ll have to accelerate our plans.”

* * *

He’d considered and re-considered how he would reveal his ability to strip bending away. It would have to be public to reach as large an audience of sympathizers as possible, but not so much so as to draw the attention of police or guards. It should double as a recruitment opportunity, which meant the targets couldn’t be people his audience might feel some ambivalence about. Everything had to be perfect.

Even once he’d nailed down the details, there was the date to consider. Thanks to the Avatar, he moved it up weeks.

Now, Amon stared down from the stage, conscious of the line of Equalists behind him and the amassed audience before him. It was the largest he’d ever faced. He didn’t feel nervous, of course, but he sensed each body, one after the other after the other, and knew the time had come to make his first open strike against benders. 

“My quest for equality began many years ago,” he said, honestly enough. It was all the truth he could afford, as far as this little biography went. His real story had certainly led to his understanding of the evils of bending and the necessity of taking it away—but nobody would understand _ that _. 

He talked of a firebender attack destroying his family and scarring his face: the same story he always told. Then he moved to the real substance of tonight’s announcement.

“As you know,” he told them, “the Avatar has recently arrived in Republic City.”

If any sentimentality towards the figure remained, he couldn’t see it; boos rang through the room. Behind his mask and make-up, Amon smiled.

“And if she were here, she would tell you that bending brings balance to the world,” he went on. “But she is wrong. The only thing bending has brought to the world is suffering!”

He thought of Yakone, of the long nights of his childhood, of Taraka cringing and crying. Of the broken, corrupted thing she had become under the weight of it, and the unending exploitation and injustices he’d seen through his travels. 

“It has been the cause of _ every _ war in _ every _era. But that is about to change.”

The moment had come, at last. He knew he had them. The crowd gazed up at him, rapt. 

“I know you have been wondering, ‘What _ is _the Revelation’? You are about to get your answer.” He took a deep breath. “Since the beginning of time, the spirits have acted as guardians of our world, and they have spoken to me.”

They had never given a damn about him, nor any of these people, either. If, somehow, the spirits caught wind of the lie, he doubted they’d do anything about it. But perhaps he was wrong, and they did have some place in all this. He couldn’t help but believe he’d been granted his abilities for a _reason_. This reason.

“They say the Avatar has failed humanity. That is why the spirits have chosen me to usher in a new era of balance. They have granted me a power that will make equality a reality! The power to take a person’s bending away.” He halted a moment to let that register, then added, “Permanently.”

Then came the demonstration. He felt no anxiety, no hesitation, nothing except distant, yet pressing purpose. Everything was falling into place, and the leader of the Triple Threat Triad made for the least sympathetic example imaginable. The man was nothing but another Yakone. It would be a pleasure as well as a necessity to cut _ him _off from his bending.

He made for an easy opponent, all the more with his obliviousness to the slight bloodbending slowing him down. This first demonstration had to go exactly right. 

And it did. When Zolt’s lightning collapsed into fire and then into nothing, he stammered out,

“Wha … what did you do to me?”

“Your firebending is gone, forever,” said Amon. He could reconnect the paths, he supposed; but he never would. “The era of bending is over. A new era of equality has begun!”

Waves of applause filled his ears, and he severed one of the gang members after the other, until the Avatar—almost predictably—showed up to interfere. But she was much too late, even if she did manage to snatch one of the gang members before he could take the man’s bending. The others had shown what Amon could do. And as he watched her flee, pursued by Equalists, he decided that she could serve his ends, after her fashion. 

“Let her go,” he ordered. “She’s the perfect messenger to tell the city of my power.”

The revelation had turned out better than he could have hoped.

* * *

Amon expected _ some _response from the council. They could hardly ignore the testimony of the Avatar herself. He very much hoped they wouldn’t, in fact. 

He and his inner circle of Equalists paid close attention to the radio announcements over the next few days, and sure enough, soon heard that the council had voted for the formation of a task force dedicated to taking him down. Excellent, he thought; it might complicate their maneuvers, but had a good chance of raising sympathy for the cause, particularly if it proved indiscriminate in its attacks. 

“The task force will be led,” said the announcer, “by Councilwoman Taraka herself, and—”

Abruptly, he felt grateful for the mask. 

It was really just like Taraka to make everything more difficult. This would have to be handled with care—with great care. They couldn’t take it lying down, and he couldn’t let serious harm come to his sister, and he had to prevent both the Equalists and Taraka herself from suspecting anything of his real identity. It wasn’t at all the kind of challenge he cared for. 

To further improve matters, the announcer’s voice then gave way to Taraka’s own.

“We’ve all heard this madman’s extremist rhetoric,” she said. “He’s coming for each one of us. There’s no more time to waste. We have to stop Amon and put an end to this nonsense.” After a suitably dramatic pause, she went on, “And that’s just what I’m going to do.”

Taraka, Amon suspected, was thoroughly enjoying herself.

Very little he could afford to do, right now, would impair that enjoyment. But he was never one to turn away an opportunity. If she insisted on this ridiculous manhunt, well, he could turn that to his use as well. 

The following night, he broke into the airwaves.

“Good evening, my fellow Equalists. This is your leader, Amon,” he declared, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t enjoying himself, too. “As you have heard, the Republic Council has voted to make me public enemy number one, proving once again that the bending oppressors of this city will stop at nothing to quash our revolution.”

True enough.

“But we cannot be stopped! Our numbers grow stronger by the day. You no longer have to live in fear.” He paused, as alert to dramatic cadence as Taraka could be. “The time has come for _ benders _ to experience fear.”

And they would.

* * *

Amon soon concluded that Taraka’s task force accomplished a net total of nothing. She managed to capture a good number of Equalists, but none of them invaluable—she certainly never came near to finding, much less attacking, Amon himself—and on their end, recruitment jumped up. It was enough for both to claim something like success. 

Predictably, Taraka then introduced a complication. She decided that the onset of revolution was the perfect time to throw a gala in honour of the Avatar. 

Amon read the announcement in the paper with some bemusement. From all he had seen, Taraka retained her fondness for small luxuries, but he’d never seen her indulge in greater ones without something to be gained from them. She must have _ some _goal in mind, but for once, he couldn’t grasp what it was.

Something to do with the Avatar, surely. Yes—all this pomp wouldn’t revolve around her unless Taraka wanted something from her. 

Some of his immediate subordinates thought it a fine opportunity for an attack. It would undercut the authority of both the councilwoman and the Avatar, and show the Equalists as the true threat they were. But Amon refused. At the moment, he assured them and himself, it would serve them better to discover what their enemies were up to than to reveal their resources too readily. They needed to wait for the right instant.

As far as the gala went, it would be easy enough to find out its purpose. Hiroshi and his daughter Asami received invitations, which Amon strongly encouraged him to accept. Thankfully, Hiroshi took ‘strong encouragement’ as Amon meant it and promptly obeyed.

Afterwards, he reported that Taraka had prodded the Avatar to take questions from reporters, who unsurprisingly asked about her absence from the task force and the fight with the Equalists in general. Within the minute, Avatar Korra had caved and agreed to join the task force, to—Hiroshi said—the councilwoman’s very evident satisfaction.

So that was it. Taraka didn’t just want legality for the task force; she wanted the legitimacy brought to anything the Avatar deigned to associate herself with. The tactic seemed expensive and unnecessarily involved to Amon, but perhaps Avatar Korra had proven recalcitrant. Taraka was not one to give up once she’d set her mind on something.

One more bender, even a skilled one using three elements, wouldn’t make too much of a difference as far as the task force was concerned. But public opinion mattered, as Amon knew very well. Taraka certainly knew it. Every time he saw pictures of her with Avatar Korra, both uniformed and determined-looking, he felt sure that she must be deeply satisfied with herself. Without difficulty, he could imagine the effect on the more sentimental members of the populace: well, they didn’t know about this task force coming into people’s neighbourhoods, but if the Avatar was leading it, it must be all right—

And every time, Amon nearly crumpled the paper in his fists. It complicated their own recruitment and he disliked seeing his sister fighting alongside the Avatar, for all that Taraka was a bender herself and a particularly oppressive one at that. Nevertheless, a remote part of him approved. Appropriating the glamour of the Avatar was clever. He wouldn’t be stopped by it, or impeded, but he respected cleverness. And Taraka always _ had _been intelligent in a slippery way. In this, he could see a glimmer of the Taraka he remembered in the Taraka who had made herself into his enemy. She was not altogether lost.

Meanwhile, she proclaimed,

“Avatar Korra has bravely answered the call to action. With the two of us leading the charge, Republic City has nothing to fear from Amon and the Equalists.”

Amon, listening to the latest press conference from within the privacy of his own apartment, laughed. _ I’ve never been afraid of you a day in my life, little sister, and I’m not about to start now. _

But really, if only she’d had the sense to run away with him all those years ago. She might now be an invaluable ally instead of a deeply inconvenient enemy. 

Well, that couldn’t be changed at this point. The only way forward was—forward.

This time, the reporters’ questions broke through clearly. A woman cried out,

“Question for the Avatar! Amon remains at large. Why have you failed to locate him?”

Avatar Korra snapped, “You want to know why? Because Amon is hiding in the shadows like a coward!”

Amon was hardly injured by the opinion of a childish, easily-manipulated bender, but found her outburst interesting nevertheless. He’d think that the Water Tribe’s Avatar would have some grasp on the importance of evasion until the right moment to shift defense into attack. She was by definition a waterbender, but she must not make much of one.

“Amon,” the Avatar went on, “I challenge you to a duel! No task force, no chi blockers, just the two of us tonight at midnight on Avatar Aang Memorial Island. Let’s cut to the chase and settle this thing, _ if _you’re man enough to face me.”

Very interesting, thought Amon.

It might be time to send a louder message.


	4. Chapter 4

Amon’s confrontation with Avatar Korra went exactly as planned. Naturally, he brought along a selection of his best-trained Equalists for the fight. He did not mean to duel her himself until he knew what she could do. 

Once they captured her—with a rather disappointing ease—he caught her face in his hand, imagining it: just severing her bending, right now. Ending the tyranny of the ultimate bender, forever. 

But it wasn’t the right time. Not yet.

The Avatar, the being who had subdued Yakone and so many others, looked terrified.

He said, “Our showdown, while inevitable, is premature. Although it would be the simplest thing for me to take away your bending right now, I won’t. You’d only become a martyr.”

He had to build to each phase properly, or everything would be ruined. She glowered at him.

“Benders of every nation would rally behind your untimely demise,” he went on.

Amon had not exactly thought of killing her before. It would only re-start the cycle, and they needed to purify the generations alive now. But how _ would _she be reborn, if she’d lost her bending in a previous life? Would it be like Noatak and Taraka, bloodbending in their veins even with Yakone’s taken away? Or would it create an Avatar for non-benders, at last?

That was probably unnecessary. Korra herself would become a non-bending Avatar before long. He knew better than to think it would convert her to their way of thinking, but—yes. 

“I assure you, I have a plan,” he said. It took no effort at all to infuse menace into his voice. “I’m saving you for last, then you’ll get your duel, and I _ will _destroy you.”

And he would.

* * *

Taraka’s raids continued, but Avatar Korra rarely if ever made an appearance at them. That was something, anyway; Taraka enjoyed some popularity in her own right, but the task force was disruptive enough that the Avatar’s absence limited its public appeal. For his part, Amon felt a measure of satisfaction at having achieved this much, though it fell far short of his ultimate goal.

Regardless, the Avatar kept a low profile after their little interview, either out of fear, or preoccupation with the pro-bending team she was on. Even sympathizers followed that asinine sport; apart from Equalists, virtually everyone did. One more way that benders made themselves the dominant figures in the city.

But no longer.

“Good morning, citizens of Republic City,” he announced over the radio. “This is Amon. I hope you all enjoyed last night’s pro-bending match”—as if he cared—“because it will be the last. It’s time for this city to stop worshipping bending athletes as if they were heroes.”

Amon paused. Though he couldn’t speak to Taraka directly, he came as near as he dared.

“I am calling on the council to shut down the bending arena and cancel the finals, or else there will be severe consequences.”

He left it at that, genuinely unsure of their response. It didn’t much matter. If the council closed the arena, it would betray their weakness. If they didn’t, it gave him the opportunity to demonstrate the Equalists’ power in the most public way imaginable.

It was his right-hand man—he’d only called the man _ lieutenant _for years—who told him,

“The council defied your threat. They’re keeping the arena open.”

Behind his mask, Amon smiled. “Perfect. Everything is going according to plan.”

The finals did, indeed, work near-perfectly. The Avatar’s opponents, the Wolfbats, cheated even more than benders always did. He watched closely; their leader appeared to be a waterbender, reasonably skilled, but no more than that. Nothing to Amon or even Taraka. After the first assault and the team’s capture, Amon listened almost indifferently to the waterbender’s pleas.

“I’ll give you the championship pot,” he babbled, “just please don’t take my bending!”

As if _ money _could stop the revolution. Amon severed his waterbending with ease, and then the other Wolfbats’, glancing out at the undercover Equalists carrying out their instructions with Hiroshi’s electrified gloves. He could see armoured metalbenders in various states of collapse, and the Lieutenant tying the Avatar’s team to an arena post.

Amon stepped out into the open, microphone in hand. 

“I believe I have your attention, benders of Republic City,” he said. “So once again, the Wolfbats are your pro-bending champions. It seems fitting that you celebrate three bullies who cheated their way to victory because every day”—he gestured with real anger—“you threaten and abuse your fellow non-bending citizens just like the Wolfbats did to their opponents tonight.”

Whatever else he might be forced to lie about, _ that _was perfectly true. If this was the likes of the Wolfbats in public, what would they be like on the streets? At home?

Well, he knew exactly what they’d be like at home. They were all the same.

“These men,” he declared, “were supposedly the best in the bending world, and yet it only took a few moments for me to cleanse them of their impurity. Let this be a warning to all of you benders out there: if any of you stand in my way, you will meet the same fate.”

They would, anyway, whether they cowered or not. But he couldn’t cleanse them _ all _at once. Better if they learned to keep their heads low, the way non-benders had to.

“Now, to my followers!” said Amon. “For years, the Equalists have been forced to hide in the shadows, but now we have the numbers and the strength to create a new Republic City.” 

The time, at long last, had come.

“I’m happy to tell you that the time for change has finally come,” he told them. “Very soon, the current tyrannical bending regime will be replaced by a fair-minded Equalist government. You and your children will no longer have to walk the streets afraid! It’s time to take back our city!”

He could hear cheers and screams from below. Too many cheers for the Equalists alone.

“For centuries, benders have possessed an unnatural advantage over ordinary people. But thankfully, modern technology has provided us with a way to even out the playing field.” At a slight gesture from him, one of his Equalists stepped forward to flourish the glove they’d all been supplied and trained with. “Now, anyone can hold the power of a chi blocker in their hand.”

Amon took a deep breath.

“My followers and I will not rest until the entire city achieves equality, and once that goal is achieved, we will equalize the rest of the world.” It might well take the rest of his life, but so be it. Yakone had been wrong, so incredibly wrong; _ this _was the purpose to his existence.

He clenched his fist, then raised it into the air.

“The revolution has begun!”

* * *

The Avatar and her allies gave his forces some small difficulty in the escape—not Amon himself, but the Lieutenant took several days to recover. Amon did not blame him for that; such things were the price of the cause. He ordered the man to rest and welcomed him once he’d recovered.

In the meanwhile, he had to accept a real, unforced error. The Avatar and her pro-bending friends paid a visit to Asami Sato, and somehow, Hiroshi managed to reveal his true allegiances in earshot of the Avatar herself. They made the best of it, first pinning the blame on another corporation, and then luring Avatar Korra, her friends, assorted police, and Chief Beifong herself into a trap. They would make excellent examples, and of course the Equalists had to capture the Avatar sometime or another, anyway. 

Instead, they only came away with some of the metalbenders. Hiroshi admitted that when his daughter was confronted with the truth, she’d turned on him and attacked both him and the Lieutenant, enabling the escape of nearly all their targets. With Avatar Korra and the disloyal Asami Sato out there to carry their stories, Amon had no way of concealing Hiroshi’s true status as a valuable Equalist. 

Well, there was no pointing in regretting it now. Amon firmly believed that the past was the past; they could only move forward. And it was a small thing as far as their broader plans went.

It did have an unforeseen consequence, though, one more significant than Amon first realized. Lin Beifong resigned as chief of police.

He didn’t quite know what to think of it. On the one hand, it made the police less dangerous. On the other, it meant that a dangerous earthbender was at large. They would have to find her and bring her in.

Still, he didn’t envision the transfer of authority between one bender and another much affecting his own plans. Not until he heard the news report covering the appointment of the new chief—a man called Saikhan. 

“It is with great humility that I take her place as Chief of Police,” he said.

Amon, rather bored, dutifully listened.

“Good news for us?” said the Lieutenant.

“We’ll see.”

The radio crackled a little. 

“Republic City is facing a threat like none the world has ever seen,” Saikhan declared. “But there is one person who’s been effective against Amon’s revolution—Councilwoman Taraka.”

Amon suppressed a twitch.

“That is why, for all matters involving the Equalists, I will report directly to her. The police department will lend any and all available resources to the councilwoman and her task force until we quell this insurgency!”

Morbidly, Amon wondered if she’d bribed, blackmailed, or simply impressed the man. Any of them seemed possible. It hardly mattered. But whatever else might result from Beifong’s resignation, she had just made _ his _plans much more complicated. 

“Should we take her out now, sir?” the Lieutenant asked.

“No.” The answer came without thought. 

He’d given it before, though always accompanied by some excuse or another. She was so well-guarded that capturing her would entail the sacrifice of good men and women; it wasn’t worth it, not yet. Or it was too early to attack such a public figure. Or—well, there was always something. 

But as her measures had become more and more aggressive, he knew he’d only delayed the inevitable. And however he justified himself, he understood what must happen. He had no business delaying it out of nothing more than a boy’s sentimentality. He knew that. Knew that anyone else’s sister would already have paid for her actions. And so must Taraka.

He thought of a little girl in the snow, and nearly flinched. It wouldn’t be punishment, he reminded himself. It was _ purification_. He would cleanse her of the very thing that had brought her so much suffering and changed her so utterly. Someday she would understand.

But not yet.

“We’d just make a martyr of her right now,” he said. “Don’t worry. Her time will come soon.”

The Lieutenant nodded, apparently satisfied by this. Amon was unsurprised; the man’s dedication had not wavered as long as he could remember knowing him. 

Excuses aside, Amon did not imagine that the police answering directly to Taraka could possibly turn out well. Even he, however, never anticipated the full extent of the disaster. Not even when she began abusing her powers within two days.

Over the radios and in the papers, the council declared allegiance to the Equalists illegal in itself. To Amon, this seemed but one more unjust law to be ignored and, soon enough, overthrown—until he read that ‘allegiance’ encompassed mere association with Equalists. Every family member of an Equalist, every friend who kept quiet, was now as much of a target as they were themselves. On top of _ that_, the law ordered all non-benders to return to their homes by nightfall. 

However much oppression and injustice the non-benders of Republic City had always experienced—and it was a great deal—this was something new. The city, and the world, had always given privileges to benders, structured the world around bending, quietly left non-benders to suffer at the hands of benders. But this was not quiet. It was targeting non-benders specifically.

_ Taraka _was targeting non-benders specifically.

It would help the Equalists, to be sure. The more that the benders tightened their grip, the more clearly they exposed the system to the populace. But it would also intensify the suffering of non-benders, the very thing the Equalists meant to combat. It was wrong. 

She had to be stopped.

As always, Amon carefully thought it through. It wasn’t enough to take her bending; at first, she’d only be angry, and she’d retain her power and her inclination to abuse it. She had to be taken out of the picture altogether. That meant capture. 

But he also had to keep her safe, if only in memory of the girl she’d once been, and the woman she might have become, had he—had things been different. Given who she was now and what she’d done, that meant keeping her out of the reach of virtually anyone, Equalists included. All the more considering the information she could reveal, however improbably. He needed to keep her completely secluded and he needed a good reason for it.

Even as he orchestrated more attacks, more raids, more messages, more everything, he strained for _ something _that would resolve all angles of the Taraka problem. Then she started turning off power in entire non-bending neighbourhoods.

“They’re not our people,” the Lieutenant said that night. “Just non-benders who didn’t keep that damn curfew. Even the Avatar took their side.”

Interesting, if irrelevant.

“We’ll bring her in tomorrow,” Amon told him. 

The Lieutenant looked blank. “The Avatar?”

“Councilwoman Taraka,” said Amon tightly. “I want her every movement followed until tomorrow night. We’ll choose the right moment and act.”

Even then, he didn’t know what he meant by _ the right moment_. The best one, perhaps. Or the least terrible. Once she left public view, they’d find her and subdue her. He’d make the final call then.

Ultimately, though, he didn’t have to make it. Not really.

By the next morning, he’d already braced himself for what the day would bring. Even so, he was surprised when the woman in charge of the Equalists’ covert agents came racing into headquarters. She’d always been composed to a fault.

“Amon, sir,” she gasped out. 

“Catch your breath, Lai,” he advised, while everyone gazed at her in various degrees of astonishment. After a few seconds, he asked, “What is it?”

She straightened up. “My agents have been tracking Councilwoman Taraka, as you asked.”

“And?”

“I—I still can hardly—sorry, sir,” Lai said. “It’s just, it’s bad news.” 

“What, did she drop dead?” said the Lieutenant.

“I said _ bad _news,” retorted Lai. She turned back to Amon, running shaking fingers through her hair. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then what is it?” Amon asked, grasping at his last shreds of patience.

With a quick exhalation, she dropped her hand.

“Taraka’s a bloodbender,” said Lai. “And she doesn’t need the full moon.”


	5. Chapter 5

The Lieutenant and the others around them gasped. And for the first time in a very long while, Amon couldn’t contain himself.

_ “What?” _

Everyone stared at him. In that moment, he didn’t care. After the first shock, the realization had instantly leapt into his mind: if they knew that Taraka could bloodbend at any time, that meant she’d _ done _it. Perhaps mere hours, or minutes, before. 

“Sir, while you were purifying those benders this morning,” said Lai, “Taraka claimed that we’d attacked her last night during her meeting with Avatar Korra. She said we seized the Avatar.”

“It never happened,” said the Lieutenant. “We only heard about it over the radio—we were going to tell you just now.”

Amon shrugged this off. If Taraka was lying, that meant that she’d been the one to capture Korra. Had she bloodbent the Avatar? Taraka, who—as far as he knew—had never bloodbent another human being in her life? He felt a flicker of pride, quickly subsumed in horror. This was his destiny, his burden.

Had their father gotten to her, after all? He’d broken her, to be sure, but even that was a far cry from turning her into an agent of his revenge. Was she _ trying _to avenge him, after all he’d done? Even as a child, she’d resisted his influence. More than Noatak had. But not enough in the end, it seemed.

“Go on,” he told Lai.

She took another deep breath. “Some of the councilmembers and their allies must have figured out the truth. There was some kind of confrontation at the council hall, just now. She bloodbent them all and fled. I’m not sure where she’s going, but my people are following her. Looks like she’s heading out of the city.”

“Probably to wherever she’s keeping the Avatar,” said the Lieutenant.

“Yes, I’d apprehended that much,” Lai said. “Well, at least she’s taken herself out of the picture.”

“And the Avatar with her,” the Lieutenant replied. “This was supposed to be bad news?”

Normally, Amon tolerated their petty squabbles as inevitable in any good-sized organization. Now, he lifted one hand. 

“There’s no time to waste,” he said. 

Both of them turned towards him, puzzled.

“She’s too dangerous to be left at large, least of all if she has the Avatar under her control.” Briefly, he imagined Yakone’s face if he’d known that such a sentence could ever be uttered of Taraka. He’d have been shocked. And delighted.

Under the mask, Amon grimaced.

“But we can’t block her chi,” said the Lieutenant. “She’ll just bloodbend us first.”

“Maybe if we surprise her,” Lai replied, then shook her head. “Even so, I don’t see how—”

“The spirits will protect me,” Amon replied calmly. “Everyone, prepare yourselves as quickly as you can. It’s time to take on this bloodbending tyrant—and the Avatar.”

* * *

With no more pomp than that, Amon, the Lieutenant, and the elite Equalists they gathered followed the directions of Lai’s people, staying carefully distant from Taraka’s vehicle.

“She shouldn’t be able to see us from this far off,” said Lai. 

“She won’t just see with her eyes,” Amon replied. “Remember, she’ll be able to sense our blood.”

Both Lai and the Lieutenant winced. Privately, Amon doubted whether Taraka would be paying enough attention to notice them at all, between the destruction of her plans and an angry Avatar to manage. But they couldn’t be too careful. Ever.

Ultimately, they arrived at a small building outside of the city, surrounded by snow. It was rock and metal, nothing like the buildings of the north, but for an instant, he still felt thrust backwards in time, back to that final icy night when he’d bloodbent his father and escaped. Bloodbent Taraka, too, as he must do one final time. He inhaled, then laid a finger over the mask’s mouth line, nodding towards the house.

They crept through the door, which opened to an upper floor leading to a staircase. He gestured for them to wait, and then—

And then Taraka came up the stairs.

His first thought was that she looked decidedly the worse for wear. Her usual oversized coat was loose, stained, and torn in places, and half of her usually immaculate hair hung over her face. Still, he could see her eyes widen at the sight of them. Or at least of him.

“Amon!”

She’d left him with no other choice. He said,

“It is time for you to be equalized.”

He could feel the others behind him preparing themselves. He doubted it would do them much good, but appreciated the effort. Taraka, meanwhile, regained some measure of her composure.

“You fool,” she said contemptuously. “You’ve never faced bending like mine!”

He’d faced it countless times in countless practice duels. But not—

Taraka lifted her hands. He’d known what must come, what—at this point—she would almost certainly do. He’d known it since the moment he heard that she was bloodbending of her own volition. And yet, somehow, he had never quite imagined their reunion like this: his people at his back, and Taraka looking at him with triumph in her eyes, and then, a sudden jolt in his legs as she bloodbent everyone. Bloodbent _ him_, just as she’d refused to do so long ago.

As a child, he’d called her a weakling, but she’d been stronger then. He could see that now. If only she’d understood a little more, understood that it wasn’t just bloodbending that polluted the world, understood before her resolve snapped. If only she hadn’t become this tyrant. If she’d come away with him—

Back then, he’d wondered what it would feel like to be bloodbent. He could tell that it was painful for others, but now, he felt a glimmer of surprise—it hurt. Not much, but enough to halt him where he stood.

But she’d never been the bender he was. He broke through it, walking steadily towards her. Taraka gasped, and briefly, he felt his limbs gripped once more.

It slowed him, just for an instant. He paused to gather his will, concentrating. With a burst of effort, he threw her grasp off. 

Taraka looked at him with horror. “What are you?”

_ I don’t want to do that to anyone. I never want to bloodbend again! _

“I am the solution,” he said.

Seizing her arm, Amon twisted her around and laid his hand against the base of her neck. Again, he focused his will, this time on the paths of her chi. And with a thought, he severed his sister from her waterbending.

Taraka screamed.

He lifted his hand, more troubled by the sound than he could admit. She collapsed to the floor, and with another twitch of his bloodbending, fell unconscious.

Behind him, the Equalists scrambled up. 

“I’ll take care of her,” said Amon, catching Taraka in his arms. “You four retrieve the Avatar. Do not underestimate her.” He reached out with his senses, frowning. One of Lai’s people had said Taraka was transporting Avatar Korra in a metal box of some kind, and the person downstairs seemed alive but unmoving. She must still be in it. “Electrocute the box to knock her out before you open it.”

“My pleasure,” said the Lieutenant.

Undoubtedly. In any other circumstances, Amon would have overseen such an important task. But he wasn’t about to leave Taraka to anyone else, and the Avatar hadn’t shown herself particularly competent against chi-blockers. He left them to it, and carried his sister to the truck, carefully laying her down in the back.

He’d scarcely done so when he heard a commotion behind him. With a sigh, Amon turned to see Avatar Korra _ not _electrocuted, but bursting out of the house. For a brief moment, they stared at each other—the Avatar and, as far as she knew, the anti-Avatar. Then she bent icicles straight at him, forcing him to instinctively, if motionlessly, bend them short of their path. She took advantage of the brief moment of distraction to flee through the snow; he could see by now that pursuit was pointless, so he settled for waiting for the others to show up, presuming she’d left them alive.

All four ran up to him, shuffling a little.

“I thought I told you not to underestimate her,” he said evenly.

It would not happen again.

* * *

The revolution did not stop for one woman. Amon stashed Taraka in as private a cell as he could dredge up, keeping her unconscious most of the time, and proceeded to the next phase of their plans. They’d taken out the council’s chair, even if she’d functionally removed herself from her position anyway; now it was time to eliminate the rest of the council and seize control of the city. In this, they were largely successful. Only the Avatar’s son escaped them, and by then, Amon’s specialized forces were sabotaging and attacking each of the boroughs while Hiroshi Sato’s airships dropped bombs.

“I’ve waited for this day for so long,” he said.

“Yes,” said Amon. “The time has come for the Equalists to claim Republic City as their own.”

_ Our _own, he reminded himself. 

From the airship, he could only vaguely make out the fruition of their plans below. There, the attack on City Hall. There, the police station. Something seemed a little off there; he could just make out several people bending and what looked like a Satomobile. Hiroshi watched through a spyglass, then lowered it.

“Tenzin has escaped once again,” he reported, and made a sound of disgust. “I can’t stand to see Asami fighting alongside those _ benders._”

Amon imagined Hiroshi’s face if he knew the truth.

“We’ll capture them before long,” he assured him, and thought of Taraka, curled up in her cell. “And you will have your daughter back.”

* * *

The capture of Air Temple Island proceeded on schedule, if with a few hiccups, and though they lost to an airship to the pursuit, they ultimately managed to capture Lin Beifong (at _ last _) and the airbenders. He took Beifong’s bending, but decided to save the airbenders for a public event. He’d be able to show his followers and the city that they could wipe out an entire element. 

And, conveniently, the temple’s isolation provided a secure location for Taraka. His preoccupations with the day’s attacks, though legitimate, had doubled as a way to put off their inevitable confrontation. He didn’t know what to expect, something he never cared for, but it could hardly go _ well_.

After he moved her to a makeshift wooden cell in the temple, Amon braced himself, adjusted the mask, and woke Taraka up. 

She looked around groggily, then up at him. With a strangled sound, she leapt to her feet.

“You,” she said, in a tone of utter loathing.

“Indeed,” said Amon. “Welcome back to Republic City, councilwoman. I’m afraid matters have substantially changed since the last time you were here.”

“Why did you bring me back?” she asked.

Her voice was sharp and demanding; she appeared to believe that, even as a prisoner, any question she chose to ask merited a reply. Certainly she seemed to have lost all fear of him when she lost her bending. 

He could hardly give her the real answer. Instead, he told her, 

“No one will come looking for you here.”

Taraka gave a short laugh. “Who would come looking for me?”

That took him aback. He couldn’t deny it, even had he felt so inclined. Who _ would _care if a power-mad bloodbender lived or died? Nobody except Amon.

“I burned all my bridges before you ever showed up,” she said. “So if you’re thinking of using me as a hostage, don’t bother.”

“I’m not in the habit of taking hostages,” said Amon. “But it’s difficult to think of anyone my followers could hate more. You’ll be better off here.”

“Oh, you’re just looking out for my best interests?” Her mouth curled into a sneer. “How kind of you.”

“You’re a valuable prisoner,” he said patiently. 

“I’m sure everything I own has been seized by someone or other at this point.”

“I wasn’t speaking of your possessions,” said Amon. “You led the fight against the Equalists. You know benders’ tactics, their hiding places. Any information you have could make your stay here more comfortable.”

Taraka’s eyes narrowed. She closed her hands around the bars of her cell. 

“I’m not giving you anything, you monster!”

“You bloodbent the Avatar and kept her in a box,” he said. “You might not be the best judge of what’s generally considered monstrous.”

She flinched away. “I had to do it. I—” Then she shook her head. “I don’t need to explain myself to you! I’m not telling you anything.”

“That is your choice, of course.” He turned to a nearby table and opened the food he’d brought her.

“You think I’ll change my mind for sea prunes?”

Amon sighed. Feeling especially long-suffering, he glanced up and over at his sister, meeting her suspicious glare. 

“I’m not starving you, Taraka.”

“Why should I trust anything you give me?” she demanded.

He couldn’t say that he wouldn’t have thought the same thing in her position. But his nerves were already strung tight enough. 

“Either you eat it,” he said, “or I shove it down your throat. Make your choice.”

Her lips pressed tightly together, but she managed an approximation of an indifferent shrug. “Fine.”

Amon handed the container of stew over to Taraka. He half-expected her to fling it at the walls—or at him—but she had too much sense for that. She ate with every appearance of composure and good appetite, then handed the box back to him. He set it aside.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said. “You would do well to consider your options by then.”

She just turned her face away.

It took him a few minutes to gather his equipment, his resolve, and the empty food box. Taraka maintained a sullen silence the entire time—a silence which he felt no need to break, for the present. He knew he’d been flailing for solid ground in the conversation, to a certain extent; now, at least, he knew where they both stood, and could proceed from there. 

No particular ideas for _ how _to proceed befriended him, however, either then or as he returned to the island that evening. He had to make her understand, but right now, he doubted he could make her understand anything, much less the revolution. And he didn’t have time for her to come around. Speed was essential right now.

Despite the successes of the day, he climbed the stairs of the temple in a state of considerable frustration—a state which his sister did nothing to abate. She ate the dinner he brought without resistance, but remained stubbornly silent the entire time, refusing to answer the simplest of questions. Nothing changed by morning, or that afternoon. He had every expectation that he would find her equally recalcitrant that night.

But when he ducked into the room he’d turned into her prison, she was _ laughing_.

Amon stared at her. Rather to his relief, she instantly sobered.

“Oh, I’m not mad,” she said, which was more than he’d heard from her in the last fifteen hours. 

Amon chose to accept this and began untying her dinner box. He almost looked forward to the peace and quiet tonight—well, the quiet, anyway. And for a minute, he had it, nothing audible but for the sea and the small, ordinary sounds of the box. Then Taraka said accusingly,

“I know what you are.”

He could almost have laughed, himself.

“I doubt that,” he replied, and noticed that the box had been placed at a slightly jarring angle from the rest of the table. He adjusted it, then reached inside and handed Taraka some strips of jerky.

She looked straight into his eyes, her own steadier than he’d seen them in a very long time. But the fear she’d betrayed just before he cut off her bending seemed to have returned to her; he could feel her heartbeat racing. Something had changed since that afternoon, yet nobody else could have spoken to her or even seen her. 

He wandered over to the other side of the room while she ate, every one of his senses on high alert. Nothing happened; in fact, she ate and drank with every appearance of docility. This struck him as deeply suspicious, and he returned to watch her as she finished the rest of her meal.

He still couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed, something was wrong. But he saw nothing to justify it. Once again, he gathered the remnants of the meal and his own equipment. Once again, he turned to go.

But this time, she spoke.

“Taking control of the city and terrorizing the Avatar?”

Amon halted, somewhere between annoyed and puzzled. His business could hardly be a mystery to her.

Then Taraka said,

“Dad must be _ so proud._”


End file.
